SOROS, GEORGE

SOROS, GEORGE (1931– ), financier and philanthropist. Born in Hungary, Soros spent a year as a child in hiding during the Holocaust. In 1947 after the communist takeover, he moved with his family to Britain. He studied at the London School of Economics, subsequently moving to New York. There he worked as a Wall Street trader but in 1969 established the Quantum Fund, that eventually would invest billions of dollars in various parts of the world. The Soros Foundation, described as the world's largest philanthropy, distributes more than $300 million annually in over 60 countries. On September 16, 1992 (subsequently referred to as "Black Wednesday"), Soros, as a currency speculator, "broke the Bank of England" by placing a hedge bet that the UK would devalue the pound sterling. This audacious act earned him one billion dollars in a single day. Much of Soros' activities are directed to Eastern Europe, where in 1992 he founded and funded the Central European University, with branches in Budapest and Prague. In 1993 and 1994 he provided one-third of Russia's scientific research budget. In 1993 he set up the Quantum Emerging Growth Fund to invest in Third World countries. In 1993 he also created the Open Society Institute (OSI), of which he was chairman. A private operating and grant-making foundation, the OSI works to support the Soros foundations worldwide and strives to shape public policy to promote democratic governance, human rights, and economic, legal, and social reform. Soros is the author of Alchemy of Finance (1987); Opening the Soviet System (1990); Underwriting Democracy (1991); Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve (1995); The Crisis of Global Capitalism (1998); Open Society (2000); George Soros on Globalization (2002); and The Bubble of American Supremacy: The Cost of Bush's War in Iraq (2004). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Time (July 10, 1995), 32–38; R. Slater, Soros: The Life, Times, and Trading Secrets of the World's Greatest Investor (1996); M. Kaufman Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire (2003). (Ruth Beloff (2nd ed.)